Are There Gay Ghosts?
The next time you feel a strange presence lurking behind you at the local gay bar, don’t be so sure it’s just that creep who’s been hitting on you for the better part of Happy Hour. It could be a Friend of Dorothy who’s passed on but decided to stay around for awhile and cop the occasional feel. It could be. . .a gay ghost. No such thing, you say? Well, think again. Edge did some homocentric paranormal sleuthing and came up with a whole new color in the flag of our proud rainbow tribe.
With LGBTs accounting for one in ten of us (and an even smaller percentage of us ending up as earthbound spirits), your chances of sighting a gay ghost are as rare as encountering a perpetually thin and sober Liza. But just because gay ghosts are rare doesn’t mean they’re not real. And why not? Once you wrap your head around the concept of life after death, it’s no great leap to conclude that some of the spirits dwelling between this realm and the next are of the lavender persuasion.
Gay Ghosts? Hell, Yes!
Ohio-based gay ghost hunter Ken Summers has compiled what we can confidently say is the web’s most comprehensive database of otherworldly queer occurrences. His website, Queer Paranormal (www.moonspenders.com) serves as "your guide to gay and lesbian supernatural phenomenom" by answering the probing questions "Do all hauntings require a heterosexual phantom? And are gay-owned businesses somehow immune to paranormal activity?" To both questions, the site provides a resounding "No."
Although he’s been investigating ghosts since the age of thirteen, Summers’ interest in the topic of LGBTs and the supernatural begun when he encountered the spirit of a recently deceased friend while visiting a gay bar. Summers: "I went to bar in Akron, hoping to run into him because I hadn’t seen him in a year. I felt someone standing up against my back. When I turned around, there was no one there. When I went to order a drink, something in my head screamed vodka cranberry." Well, we’ve all been there; but for Summers, the intuitive drink order had an otherworldly explanation: "I didn’t think anything of it and went on talking to these friends of mine. Within a few hours, one mentioned that somebody who frequented the bar committed suicide. By the way he described him, I knew it was my friend." Over the next several days, Summers began to connect the events at the bar with his late friend. Back in college, they worked through some personal issues with a night of screening "Victor/Victoria" and downing vodka cranberries. What happened at the bar, he believes, was his friend’s "subtle sign of letting me know he was there and was OK.
Three Gay Ghost Stories
The Hauntings section of Queer Paranormal documents ghost sightings in gay bars, B&Bs, theaters and clubs from around the world. Locations in pink denote places with gay or lesbian ghosts; those in blue indicate haunted gay or lesbian-owned establishments. Here are a few highlights:
